How About Affirmative Action for the NBA?
Suppose there were affirmative action for the National Basketball Association. What would it look like?
Before we address that question, we must ask: why would anyone even think of such a policy? It is simple. We want an NBA that "looks like America." Right now, this league does not at all fit that bill. Blacks are only 13% of the population, yet they constitute something like 80% of the players.
As a first step in this initiative, we would have to fire most of the black athletes now in the league. Then we would be obligated to hire enough whites so that the racial makeup would at least roughly conform to that of the entire nation.
But that would be only the beginning of the process. We would be seeking not only equal proportional representation, but also equity. That is, the goal would be that these newcomers would be treated in much the same manner as those they had replaced. In a word, we want to make them feel welcome, as though they "belong," that they are not at all second-class citizens.
Presumably, the worst of the present black players would be released. The crème de la crème would remain. But then there would be embarrassment and humiliation. Those fired would vastly outstrip the new white players. We know this since the former were members of the NBA, and the latter were not. But those who stayed on would be so scintillatingly superior to the latter that it would appear, almost, as if they were playing a different game. In terms of the usual metrics, the remaining blacks would heavily outstrip the newcomer whites in terms of points scored, steals, blocks, rebounds, etc. But we would not want the latter to feel that they "didn't belong" in the NBA. At all costs, we want them to feel welcome. What should be done?
Originally published at https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/how_about_affirmative_action_for_the_nba.html